How Junior Caminero’s prolific power could put young Rays slugger in the company of Hall of Famers

The Tampa Bay Rays have found their footing after a bit of an atypical start to the 2025 season. At the close of play on May 19, they had dropped to a season-worst five games under .500, and one had to wonder whether one of the canniest organizations in Major League Baseball was going to endure a second straight losing season. Had owner Stuart Sternberg’s utter lack of willingness to invest in the on-field product finally caught up to the Rays? As we near the midpoint of the season, the answer appears to be a firm “no.”

Going into Monday’s slate of games, the Rays are 43-35. That puts them within hailing distance of the first-place New York Yankees in the American League East, and it also gives them a hold on the top wild-card spot in the AL. Slow start and all, the Rays are now just shy of a 90-win pace. 

As you would expect, there are many reasons for the Rays’ success in 2025. One of those is the rising stardom of third baseman Junior Caminero. Caminero reached the majors in 2023 for a September cup of coffee at age 19, and making it to the highest level at such an age is itself an indicator of future greatness. Coming into the 2024 season, CBS Sports ranked Caminero as the No. 2 overall prospect in baseball, just behind Jackson Holliday of the Orioles. In that write-up, our R.J. Anderson noted:  

“Caminero has an incredibly fast bat. It doesn’t matter that he wraps the barrel; he’s able to generate big-time exit velocities and easy power.” 

Caminero showed flashes of his potential in 2024, when he played in 43 games for the Rays and exhausted his rookie status. This season, though, he’s very much taken the next step: 

That OPS+ figure means his park-adjusted OPS is 32 points higher than the league-average mark. In related matters, Caminero is seventh in the AL in total bases and fifth in extra-base hits with 35. Those 19 homers are good for a third-place tie in the junior circuit, behind just Cal Raleigh of the Mariners and Aaron Judge of the Yankees. 

It’s those homers we should talk about. If current paces hold, then Caminero will get 40 homers for the season. That’s an impressive number for any hitter, let alone one who’s a mere 21 years of age. As it turns out, just three sluggers have ever achieved a 40-homer season at age 21 or younger: 

So that’s two Hall of Famers and one former MVP and possible future Hall of Famer on that very short list. If Caminero gets there, he’ll obviously be walking with some baseball gods. 

That, though, is a long way off. As it turns out, there’s another path to history for Caminero that will be resolved in a matter of days. No, it’s not a baseball benchmark that leaps immediately to mind when pondering such things, but it is a strong indicator of current and future greatness. Posed as a question: Will Caminero become one of the few extremely young sluggers to “out-homer” his age by the All-Star break? That is, will the 21-year-old hit 22 home runs before the first half concludes at the close of play on July 13? 

Out-homering one’s age happens from time to time. Raleigh, for instance, has already achieved the feat this season, and Judge did it last season (Shohei Ohtani matched his age in homers in the first half of last season). To achieve the feat at Caminero’s age, however, is altogether rarer. 

Here’s the list of those youthful mashers who have managed to put up more first-half homers than years on earth at age 21 or younger: 

Again, it’s enviable company. Ott and Mathews are in the Hall. Canseco, while something of a punchline these days, was a force of nature across the early years of his career, and Bellinger is a former MVP who might have been on a Hall track before suffering a major shoulder injury in 2020. Just missing the list — they matched their age totals rather than topped them — are future HoFers Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera. 

Caminero needs just three home runs within the Rays’ next 19 games in order to add his name to this hallowed ledger. Given that he’s averaged a homer every 14.9 at-bats this season, he should get there. Look under the hood, and you’ll not surprisingly find cause to believe that Caminero is indeed for real. Consider: 

• He presently leads all MLB hitters with an average bat speed of 78.0 mph. 
• He’s in the 80th percentile of MLB hitters in average exit velocity and the 81st percentile in hard-hit rate. 
• He’s in the 69th percentile in barrel rate, or the ideal combination of launch angle and exit velocity for power production. 
• His maximum exit velocity of 116.5 mph puts him in the top 3% of hitters. 
• He pulls the ball in the air 21.2% of the time. That’s the surest path to doing extra-base damage, and Caminero ranks 81st out of 252 qualified hitters in that metric.
• He’s slugging .572 against fastballs with an expected slugging percentage of .573.

To be sure, Caminero still has flaws. Although he’s lifted his launch angle a bit this season, he still puts the ball on the ground a bit more often than the average baseball-playing bear, and that’s in part why Caminero presently leads the majors with 20 GIDPs. The power, though, is very real, and he’s in rarified air when it comes to home runs.

It all adds up to a superstar and perhaps future MVP in the making for the Rays. Indeed, Caminero, at an age when most players are still in the lower rungs of the minors, may have multiple appointments with history ahead of him in 2025.